It has been over two weeks since CES has come and gone and I figured since I am finally caught up on my email, and have had time to go through the 2,000+ photos we took while out at the CES 2007 event, that I would do an overall summary article including some of the things that we saw at the show which we found particularly interesting. There were certainly some very unique, new products shown at CES, a few of which I will eagerly be awaiting their retail availability.
This was my first trip to CES and I was very excited to be going. I have attended E3 a couple times, Comdex (the last show they had) and countless large lanparty/media events. CES is one of the last few shows that I really wanted to attend as it is one of the largest consumer electronics shows in the world. Products you can expect to see there range from car audio to PC video cards to fitness equipment to (fill in the blank)... I saw many things which I would not have expected to see at an electronics convention. Pocket knives, furniture, and toilet seats are just a few of the strange objects I did not expect to encounter on the CES floor. :) To keep organization of theis article easier on me I have written about some of the experiences we had with the various company displays at CES and they are listed alphabetically below.
Ageia / PhysX
Ageia was on hand to show off their PhysX physics platform and had some pretty impressive demos ready to show it off. I had previously seen some of their demos at E3 the prior year and I have to say that it looks like the technology is maturing nicely.
We were shown a snow boarding demo where the powder thrown around by your board are actual objects in the game vs being a sprite that is simply there for decoration. If enough of the snow piles up behind you there is a chance for an avalanche to follow you down the mountain, usually resulting in your demise. They also showed off a working game demo for an upcoming game called Cell Factor. The game was an early technology demo that was used to really showed off the power of the PhysX platform and which will now end up being made into a full-fledged game. This demo showed one of the flying characters using telekinetic powers that was able to divert the flow of fluids, push aside fire, pick up and throw a swirling storm of debris and other nice special effects. The final demo showed off the physics applications in a FPS setting. Palm leaves bent and swayed in reaction to your wading through them; you were able to actually shoot the foliage and it would react surprisingly realistically in that it would sway and shimmy when shot and pieces of the plant would fly off and float to the ground. As a hard-core FPS gamer myself, I immediately realized the endless possibilities for this technology to provide a whole new level of gaming realism. Keep an eye on this technology.
Alienware
Alienware was showing off some of their new Core 2 Duo notebooks and PCs which looked to offer the usual Alienware muscle and aesthetics. They did have something else to show which did catch my eye, though.
The Hangar18 HD Entertainment Center was a very impressive HTPC offering. The system is packed with features including 4 TV tuners (2 analog and 2 HD/Digital), up to 1.5 Terabytes storage, stereo receiver with built-in 1000w amp, slot-loading DVD-RW, Bluetooth and Wireless G networking, memory card readers galore and much more. Needless to say, we were VERY impressed when they said they were aiming for a starting price point of $1,500. For all of the features this things packs in (including an AMD64 X2 CPU) I don't think you could get a better deal by doing it yourself... as a system builder myself, it is no small shock to be saying that.
Asus
One trend I noticed is that there are many new LCDs hitting the market. You will soon see many new LCDs featuring HDMI and 1080p resolution options with a myriad of bells and whistles. Quite a few of these companies are pretty new or COMPLETELY new to the LCD market so the results should be interesting to see. Asus had some monitors on display; one of their bells is that the monitors feature preset color settings that you can use to cycle through and choose depending on your current use. The idea is interesting, however I have always been the type of person to set it to how it SHOULD be for accuracy and then leave it alone. :)
Among the plethora of video cards and motherboards that Asus was displaying the video card that immediately demanded some attention was the EN8800 GTX w/ Top AquaTank Cooling. This limited supply card (1000 pieces) features a 8800 GTX with 768MB of DDR3 RAM running at 2.06GHz (1030MHz DDR3). The GPU is clocked at 630MHz. Asus claims that the cooling is at least 12C better in regards to cooling when compared to a generic 8800 GTX card. They also claim that the card is "over 11% faster than generic 8800 GTX boards." Impressive a little? No word on the price tag, though. I would expect it to be pretty high given the specs, cooling, and limited production run.
The latest incarnation of the abomination known only as the Vento was on display at CES. Asus has taken a much needed turn for the better in regards to aesthetics for the Vento. This newer version is slick but not sick (in a bad way)... the old Vento used to make me gag just looking at it. :)
